The present invention relates generally to the bulk processing of mail and the like, and in particular, to the opening of bulk mail in automated fashion.
A variety of organizations customarily receive mail in large quantities and in bulk form. Accordingly, a number of devices have been developed to facilitate the handling of such mail so as to enhance productivity. To this end, a variety of different devices have been developed to facilitate the handling of mail at various stages of the mail room operation. Stackers have been developed to organize received envelopes for presentation to subsequent stages of the mail extraction process. Sorters have been developed to out-sort envelopes which do not conform to specified standards, or to identify envelopes which are particularly desirable for priority or expedited processing. Slitters have been developed to open the envelopes, generally along one or more edges. Extractors have been developed to operate upon the slit envelopes to separate the faces of the envelopes and expose their contents, for extraction by an operator. Candlers have been developed to scan the envelopes which have proceeded through the extraction process to verify that all contents have been removed. Many other pieces of support equipment have been developed to assist in the above-described operations, and to provide other functions which complement a complete mail room operation.
Such devices have greatly facilitated mail room operations, which were traditionally slow and laborious in nature, by significantly reducing the amount of time and labor required to extract contents from received mail. However, these improvements have been achieved at the expense of requiring numerous separate pieces of equipment to perform the various functions required to take received bulk mail, and remove its contents for subsequent processing. Although it has been possible to combine some of the above-described functions in a single apparatus, it has generally remained necessary to proceed through multiple, discrete mail extraction operations, as distinguished from a single automated procedure.
As a consequence of this, while labor requirements have been significantly reduced by such equipment, the mail extraction operation still remains relatively labor intensive in that numerous support personnel are required to service and operate the various devices used in the mail extraction operation, and to direct articles of mail between the various devices used for mail extraction once each device has completed its individual task. Also as a consequence of such multiple, discrete operations, the overall mail extraction operation must be routed in some manner, leading to the potential for inefficient routing in the event that the available devices or the available floor plan do not lend themselves to maximum efficiency, and leading to the potential for quantities of received mail to remain unopened for excessive periods of time while awaiting further processing on the next processing device.
The matter of efficiency becomes particularly important when it is desired to process bulk mail for the extraction of invoices and accompanying payments (checks), since delays in processing can cause resulting delays in the deposit of such payments, which is clearly undesirable.
It has therefore remained desirable to develop a fully automated extraction apparatus which is capable of removing the contents from bulk mail in a single operation, eliminating the need for separate handling and its attendant disadvantages.